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By Kelly Whalen
 
When a mysterious pneumonia showed up in the southern Chinese
province of Guangdong in November 2002, few could have predicted
the global crisis it would cause. The outbreak is now known,
of course, as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
SARS, a coronavirus believed to have jumped from animals to
humans, is something relatively rare -- a life-threatening disease
that spreads from one person to another through casual contact.
The disease has reached more than two dozen countries since
the first case was identified. By June 2003, more than 8,400
people worldwide had been infected by SARS and more than 780 had died.
Although the death count pales when compared with outbreaks
of other diseases throughout history, the swift spread of SARS
raises strong concerns about the vulnerability we face in this
age of globalization. During the initial months of the SARS
outbreak, newspapers predicted that it was "the next AIDS."
More doomsday prophecies followed as the realization set in
that a deadly infectious virus can move from one corner of the
world to another in less than a day, simply by hitching a ride
on an unsuspecting airplane passenger.
Yet, even though illnesses can infect populations faster than
ever before, the spread of infectious disease always has been
linked to an increasing number of people moving around the world.
Smallpox followed explorers during the age of exploration, and
tuberculosis surfaced in overpopulated city centers during the
Industrial Revolution. In this interactive world atlas, trace
the spread of the SARS crisis and other key epidemics throughout
history.
Click on each disease name on the map above to learn more
about its outbreak and spread.
Malaria: In 95 B.C., malaria, a mosquito-borne disease,
was so endemic to the swampy farmland outside the ancient city
of Rome that it was called "Roman fever." Mosquitoes followed
farmers who moved to the city, the epidemic flourished, and
Rome's population dwindled.
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Plague: In 1347, Black Death, carried by rats and
fleas, spread along old silk caravan and spice trading routes,
killing nearly one-third of Europe's population in just four
years.
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Smallpox: Half the population of the area now surrounding
modern Mexico City died from smallpox in 1520. The disease
was spread by Spanish conquistadors, and in its wake, two
empires fell, the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru.
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Tuberculosis: By 1815, one in four deaths in England
were the result of a tuberculosis epidemic, or the Great White
Plague. The airborne disease spread through rapid industrialization
in overcrowded cities.
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Cholera: Widespread flooding and famine caused a cholera
outbreak in 1817 in India. British industrialists and troops
then carried the disease, via contaminated water and food,
to the country's northern borders. Trading ships spread the
disease east.
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Yellow Fever: In 1853, one in 10 people in New Orleans
and 20,000 people along the Mississippi Delta were felled
by yellow fever. The mosquito-borne disease, with origins
in Africa, came to the United States on slave ships.
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Spanish Flu: In 1917, World War I U.S. army camps reported
a flu death every hour. The deadly disease, spread at seaports,
accounted for more lost lives than those killed on WWI battlefields.
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Hepatitis B: In 1942, more than 50,000 U.S. military
personnel were hospitalized after an unexplained hepatitis
B outbreak, the biggest ever recorded in the history of the
disease. The epidemic was linked to tainted human serum in
a yellow fever vaccination used on soldiers that had not yet
been FDA-approved.
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AIDS: After the initial outbreaks of AIDS in 1980, it
took medical researchers three years to identify the retrovirus,
HIV, that causes the disease. By then, the virus, which is
transmitted through sexual intercourse and contaminated blood
and hypodermic needles, had felled 1,000 people in the United
States and had spread to dozens of other countries.
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SARS: In November 2002, a deadly virus never before
seen in humans was reported in China's Foshan City. Scientists
have since linked hundreds of cases around the globe to a
cluster of people, including a medical professor who may have
treated a victim of SARS, then stayed in a crowded Hong Kong
hotel in February.
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Sources include:
World Health Organization; Brent Hoff and Carter Smith III (and
Charles H. Calisher as consulting editor), "Mapping Epidemics:
A Historical Atlas of Disease," New York: Franklin Watts, a
division of Grolier Publishing, 2000; Sheldon Watts, "Epidemics
and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism," New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 1997; Howard Markel and Stephen
Boyle, "The Epidemic Scorecard," The New York Times,
April 30, 2003; Rick Weiss, "War on Disease," National Geographic,
Feb. 1, 2002; Robert Glass, "AIDS Is Becoming a Global Health
Problem," Associated Press, Dec. 17, 1983; "World War II Hepatitis
Outbreak Was Biggest in History," Associated Press, April 16,
1987; Gary Gernhart, "A Forgotten Enemy: PHS's Fight Against
the 1918 Influenza Pandemic," Public Health Reports,
U.S. Government Printing Office, Nov. 1, 1999.
Kelly Whalen is a writer and documentary
producer based in Oakland, California.
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